Flor de Yemanjá
by Petronia
Summary: Post-series. The Fuji boys celebrate their birthdays, and Yuuta comes to terms with his brother. Cameos by the St.Rudolph tennis team, Mizuki's bedroom, hints of TezuFuji, and Yumiko as a Candomblé priestess.


**Flor de Yemanjá**

That morning Akazawa came to watch the club practice, so Yuuta asked him about his high school applications. The question itself was an attempt at neutral conversation; it seemed to Yuuta that most third years in Saint-Rudolph had talked of nothing but since Christmas. Certainly the first-choice schools of the other club members were no secret, though Akazawa's personality discouraged desultory curiosity.

The answer threw him for a loop.

"_Eh?_" he said. Then, "But that's not where Mizuki-san's going."

Silence. Akazawa turned his head and pinned Yuuta with an _is-it-just-me-or-are-you-really-that-slow_ look, made all the more crushing by his height advantage. Belated realisation dawned; Yuuta flushed and looked down at his tennis shoes.

"Um."

Akazawa ground in another second of the look for good measure. "Look," he said, "Don't get me wrong. This school's done a lot for all of us, but Francis-Xavier is more of the same – plenty of budget, no infrastructure. I've had enough of 'tradition-building'. At some point you have to start thinking about your own goals, and what kind of environment will get you there. Mizuki's had his chance. You catch my drift?"

"Yessir," Yuuta said, because it seemed the only viable response. Akazawa looked as if he were repressing the urge to roll his eyes.

"You're in charge of the club now, in any case," he said. "Not Mizuki; he'll be gone come March. Remember it. It's up to you not to let the side down this year."

"Yessir."

"But after that?" Akazawa sketched a shrug, as if to indicate realms of opportunity limited only by imagination and effort. He leant back against the wire fence surrounding the tennis court. As he was standing outside this meant that Yuuta could no longer see his expression.

"You ever think of applying for Seigaku again? It won't be the same club roster, and it's a good academics school."

_ And they've already taken you once._ The addendum was implicit.

"No," Yuuta said firmly. "Anywhere but Seigaku."

Akazawa shrugged again, and did not pursue the subject.

* * *

"Shuusuke's not home yet," Yumiko said in the car that evening.

"Aniki?"

"Unavoidable engagement, he said." Yumiko pursed her lips and cut off the Toyota Altezza in the next lane with surgical precision. "As if his cute little brother's birthday didn't fall on the same day every year! We'll give him hell for it when he deigns to toddle home, don't worry."

_ We_ was their mother and Yumiko herself. Yuuta winced.

"'S okay," he said, "I'm not worried." _Understatement,_ he added mentally, staring out the passenger-side window at the clumps of commuters waiting for a light change or a bus on each corner. _Unlooked-for reprieve_ was nearer the mark.

He tried to remember how his last birthday dinner had gone. Chances were it hadn't been an unqualified success: a year ago he and Shuusuke had barely been on speaking terms. Yuuta had stayed out as late as he'd been allowed as often as he'd been allowed, practicing with the group of sempai he'd met at tennis school, hanging out at the street courts or going for fast food together. The camaderie had been heady. Here had been a common goal, one that made Shuusuke seem small in comparison with its dizzying possibility; here were comrades who understood and saw him for what he was. Mizuki was a visionary, in whose plan Yuuta was accorded a starring role. When he'd crossed Shuusuke on the stairs or in the vestibule he would only look at him coldly. There was no longer any point in verbal challenges, not when it was a matter of time before Yuuta would come into his own.

What he remembered from that time was that Shuusuke had always met his gaze square on, his expression calm and grave. _Itterasshai,_ he'd said, or _okaeri,_ but nothing else. School had started, Yuuta had moved into the Saint Rudolph dormitories, and for the first few months he hadn't gone home at all.

Then Saint Rudolph had met Seishun Gakuen in the Kantou regional tournament, and lost to the team that would eventually win it all.

It made no sense, really, when Yuuta thought about it. Shuusuke had been the one to attain that vertiginous goal, and Yuuta had fallen short again, but the resentment wouldn't come. Was it because Yuuta would be captain of Saint Rudolph next year, with another shot at the Nationals? Shuusuke could be an effortless born talent all he liked, but he would never be team captain.

It was the kind of thought that never used to occur to Yuuta. Now he wondered if Shuusuke cared.

When they arrived home they found their mother puttering between kitchen and dining room, as cheerful as always. A smidgeon _too_ cheerful, in fact. Yuuta sniffed a minefield lying in wait for some predetermined booted foot, kept his head down and packed away triple servings of everything. The Saint Rudolph cafeteria had nothing on _maison __ Fuji_'s cucumber vichyssoise or mango-and-swordfish red curry with fresh basil, and that was before rumours of the dessert course even made it to table.

"Father had to fly to São Paulo from Los Angeles," Yumiko leant over and whispered as their mother whisked away empty dishes. "He _said_ Tuesday but some emergency client thing happened."

Yuuta winced again and speared the last chunk of mango. _So it's not Aniki she's on about... _"Is he going to call?"

"Not until the plane makes a stopover in Salvador. It's not so bad – I mean, it's probably not going to be like the gazebo incident. But it _is_ your birthday." Yumiko sighed, dabbing at the corner of her mouth with her napkin. "I'm siding with Mother anyhow. If anyone's going to Salvador, we should all go. It was so much fun the last time."

"Last time?" Yuuta said.

* * *

"Last time," Yumiko said, dancing her slender manicured fingers over the bookshelf. " Brazil, Brazil, Salvador... There we are. See?"

Yuuta took the photo album she held out and frowned down on the opened page. "I don't remember that." But there he was, maybe four? Five? In shorts and sailor middy – sailor middy! – sugar-white sand caked up to his knees, scowling back at the camera lens. There was more sand in the background, the edge of a towel, and a colourful blur that might have been beach umbrellas in the middle distance. The snapshot could have been taken on a beach in Japan, or anywhere on earth.

"Well, you weren't even in school yet." Yumiko leant over the back of the loveseat; Yuuta could feel the ends of her hair brush against his shoulder. "Shuusuke remembers, though, he mentioned it the other time... oh, look at that. I hated that swimsuit."

Yuuta had turned the page: Yumiko in a white one-piece, kneeling on a blue and green striped beach towel. He blinked, suddenly jarred by familiarity. Yumiko had not started to grow her hair out until she left the track team, her first year of high school. In the photograph it was chin-length and mussed, falling over her cheeks in sun-kissed strands. She must have been fifteen, if this was taken when he wasn't in school yet – the same age as Shuusuke now, though he knew better than to point out the fact.

She was smiling up at the camera.

Yuuta swallowed and turned that page over. Then he stared at the next photo, because there they were: Yumiko, smiling still, but with her arms slung around her two younger brothers to pull them close for the picture.

His younger self was scowling harder than ever, brandishing a toy trowel and pointedly ignoring the camera. And as for—

"He's so _small,_" Yuuta said, nonplussed. Yumiko gave a puff of laughter that tickled his ear.

"Oh, do you look much bigger?"

"No, but—" Yuuta trailed off, not knowing what to say. Always smiling, he thought; always popping up out of nowhere, full of dares and mysteries and creepy stories that grew in the mind until they became nightmares, always haring off again before Yuuta had halfway figured out what was going on. Even worse than trying to keep up with him were the schemes that _Yuuta_ had to put into effect (and did, because Shuusuke always made whatever it was sound like the only reasonable course of action at the time). At least adults tended to believe the version of events he concocted afterward.

Yuuta couldn't recollect ever giving it any thought, when he was a kid. Shuusuke was just _there;_ that was the way life was. It was unfair that someone who took up so much space was so physically insignificant.

"Here," Yumiko said after a moment, and came to sit beside him. "How about this?" She turned to the last third of the album.

Yuuta studied the photos on the page, and shook his head. "I don't remember." The images were compelling, though, strikingly framed and utterly foreign in content. A group of dark-skinned women dressed in white, fishing boats moored off a pier – the sea in the background was fierce with reflected light – a little girl with braided hair holding a square mirror in both hands. The doorway of some sort of church or hall garlanded with flowers, its steps strewn with crushed petals (or was it confetti? popcorn?). These were followed by several crowd shots, apparently taken from an upper-story window or balcony. The celebrants' faces contrasted darkly with the prevailing white of shirts and dresses and over-exposed sky. He couldn't spot any of his family members. "What is it, a matsuri?"

"Something like that. It takes place every year, in February." Yumiko ran a finger down the edge of the album. "There. You see the woman in the painting? That's Yemanjá, the kami of the ocean. She's said to be beautiful and vain, so people bring her gifts to make her look kindly on them. Flowers, mirrors, things like that. Boats take them and throw them into the sea."

"Eeehh..." Yuuta flipped, flipped again. "These are your pictures, Neesan?" Yumiko had liked photography, but she'd given it up – once again in high school.

"Most of them. Mother took this one." The snapshot was of Yumiko herself, in a white sundress and hat, posing in front of a circle of drummers. She carried a bouquet of white roses in her arms.

"You brought flowers too?" Yuuta asked, interested. "You're allowed?"

"It depends. There it was all right as long as you followed along with everyone else." Yumiko smiled, a secretive curve of the lips. "I thought it was romantic. There's singing and dancing, you know, and baskets full of flowers - roses, carnations, all kinds. It was too far to take a photo, but afterward you see them floating in the sea for a while. Like the poem: _the sea is awash with roses, O they blow upon the land..._"

Yumiko's voice trailed off. After a few seconds she sighed, visibly shaking off memory. "I'd have thought you'd remember _something._ What about when you wandered off? What did you do then?"

Yuuta's jaw dropped. "_I_ wandered off?"

"Isn't it funny? For once you weren't even following Shuusuke. I had to hold onto him to keep him from running off into the crowd to try to find you. But I was sure that you'd come back on your own. _Trust me,_ I said – and you did. All dirty and sleepy and cranky from having cried." She tilted her head to look at him. "Strange, isn't it?"

Yuuta closed his mouth with an effort. "Yeah," he said, "it kind of is." _Shuusuke panicking? Wish I'd been there to see _that

"It seems even stranger to me now." Yumiko reached up and touched his cheek; her fingers were cool, and Yuuta caught a whiff of a warm-sweet scent like dried apricots. "It was a sea day, a salt water day, on which the White Lady took and granted gifts. Shuusuke's nature is water; I wouldn't have been surprised if something had come to pass for him. But you..."

"Neesan," Yuuta said, uncomfortable, and it was like a spell being broken. Yumiko blinked and laughed.

"I'm being silly. I didn't realise any of this back then. That was the first time I realised anything at all: when I was sure that you were safe. Kami don't always grant your wishes in the way you'd expect."

* * *

Normally by ten-thirty Yuuta would get irresistably sleepy (unless he was halfway through a dungeon dark and deep, with miles to go before the next save point), so he'd start getting ready for bed a little before then. That evening he dawdled, rummaging through a decade's worth of photo albums with Yumiko and poking desultorily at one of his saved levels in Time Crisis. When he found himself simultaneously stifling a yawn and eyeing next week's homework he decided to give it up and turn in. Shuusuke wasn't home yet, after all, and there was no sense in pushing his luck.

In the end he _almost_ made it. He had changed into pyjama bottoms and was in the act of brushing his teeth when a soft knock came on the bathroom door.

"Yuuta. May I come in?"

Yuuta nearly gagged on his toothbrush. "_No,_" he gurgled forcefully, "stay out of—" But of course it was Shuusuke's bathroom too.

The silence on the other side of the door was expectant. Toothpaste started to get everywhere; Yuuta spat, gargled, ran the water. Then he jerked the door open a crack. "What?"

"Happy birthday," Shuusuke said, smiling. And Yuuta had to readjust his glare, because Shuusuke was just a little below where he was expecting him to be. Once he did it didn't qualify as a glare anymore.

(Yuuta had realised some time ago that his growth was outstripping Shuusuke's – "You take after your father," their mother had said, a wistful note in her voice – and it filled him with indecent satisfaction, when he considered it on his own time. As usual, Shuusuke's actual presence muddied the waters. He'd get these flashes where it'd seem he should be looking up at his brother instead of down, and it felt awkward and counter-intuitive, even though he'd been taller for a year and the difference was now upward of six centimeters. He couldn't get used to it, somehow.

(It wasn't until much later in life that he would pin down the precise nature of the discomfort: Shuusuke gave off the impression that he was the right size, and anyone who was taller was too big.)

"Thanks," he mumbled. Shuusuke leant against the doorframe and sighed a little.

"I nearly didn't make it. Aah, I even missed dessert. Hope Neesan saved a slice of pie for me."

"Where _were_ you?" Yuuta blurted, then bit his tongue. Blue eyes flashed up at him in – surprise? – then narrowed consideringly.

"I had to go meet someone."

There was an odd emphasis on the phrasing. Yuuta blinked.

Meet someone?

Did he just mean—

No _way. _

He tried to picture his brother out on a date with a girl; the train of thought derailed at express speed and crashed catastrophically. When the blinding white light went away he realised Shuusuke was smiling at him widely, like a cat who'd just been served canary in cream sauce.

"The captain of our tennis club just came back from overseas," he said. "So we arranged to take him out for sushi. Doesn't know how to pick his dates, does he? But I couldn't tear myself away... Do you want your present?"

Yuuta opened his mouth and closed it again. His neck felt hot. _Serves you right for not being in bed an hour ago,_ he thought furiously.

"Here," Shuusuke said, producing a large flat square from behind his back. It was wrapped in an absurdly childish teddy-bear-patterned gift paper. "Mother's not here, so you don't have to open it right now. I know—" the smile widened a fraction—"you like to save them."

* * *

The package sat, unopened, in Yuuta's dorm room for a week, wedged between the dresser and the head of his bed where casual interlopers wouldn't come across it - unopened presents were a thousand-year marvel in a boy's dorm, even if they didn't appear to contain food. However Yuuta had to see it most times when he got up in the morning, which did nothing to start his day off on the right foot.

He knew what it was, of course. He wasn't dumb, and there were only so many flat square objects of that size. It was so _representative_ that it pissed him off.

Why did his brother have to be such a freak?

"Dude, is this yours?" Nomura said at the end of the week. Yuuta glanced reflexively over his shoulder and was promptly felled in a hail of machine-gun fire, alarms blaring and visor screen flashing red. He groaned and dropped his gun, letting it skitter away across the floor.

"Thanks a lot. What?"

"This. Late birthday present?"

"None of your business," Yuuta said, already resigned. He got up from the PS2 and padded across the room, snatching the package from Nomura's hands. "And no, it's not."

"But it's wrapped and every—" The noise of tearing giftwrap cut across Nomura's sentence, and he shut up. Thankfully. Yuuta made short work of the paper, crumpled it into a ball and tossed it into the rubbish bin.

"Nothing but net," he said, and turned his attention back to the record. Of course. It was worse than he'd expected: the sleeve featured a black lady in a beehive hairdo and waxed eyelashes, gaze lowered demurely over her shoulder. On a fuschia background. The English fonts cried out to a decade long past.

There was a sticky note attached to the front. The text was brief.

_Dear Yuuta,_

Hope you enjoy. It took me a while to track down the LP.

Many Happy Returns once again,  
S. ()

Yuuta crumpled that too, acutely and suddenly conscious of Nomura still peering over his shoulder. "Do you mind?" he snapped.

"Sorry," Nomura said quickly, and sat up on Yuuta's bed. He didn't make any comments either, which was good because Yuuta would've decked him. He was starting to get the old familiar sinking feeling, and that pissed him off indescribably.

Tracked down. Knowingly, purposefully, and if Yuuta called him on it he'd spout some bullshit like, "Analog makes for a warmer sound, Yuuta," all the while smiling like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. As if Yuuta would have a record player. _Nobody_ had a record player! How old were they? What sort of weirdo their age would—

With a sigh, Yuuta let himself fall backward against the side of the bed. The back of his head thumped on the edge of the mattress, and he stayed there, eyes closed and perfectly still. Arms akimbo, hands slack. Nomura peered at him worriedly.

"Yuuta-kun?"

"Nomura," Yuuta said. Still with his eyes closed. "Who's got a record player?" Nomura blinked.

"I don't... wait."

"Yeah?"

"Seriously, I think Mizuki's got one. He likes opera, right? I seem to—"

"That's what I thought," Yuuta said. He sat up and began to fumble under his bed, looking for his dorm slippers. "And where's Mizuki-san now?"

"In the library. He'll probably be there 'til they close."

"Now or never, then," Yuuta said. Nomura stared at him in dawning horror.

"You don't mean you're going to borrow it?"

"Now or never."

"But it's in his room! You'd have to _go in there!_"

"Something worse'll happen if I don't get it over with," Yuuta said with complete sincerity born of experience. Nomura flopped back on the bed, exhaling through his teeth.

"Okay, I guess," he said. "Sometimes a man's got to do what a man's got to do. But dude, I don't envy you."

Halfway up the stairs Yuuta had the thought that Mizuki might keep the door of his single locked. It didn't need to be – everyone in the dorm knew better – but the question was whether _Mizuki_ knew that they knew. It had sometimes crossed Yuuta's mind that Mizuki wasn't nearly as clear-sighted about himself as he was about other people.

It was a confusing line of thought, and he tried not to pursue it very far.

It turned out that the door wasn't locked. _So much for that excuse,_ Yuuta thought, and eased it open. The scent of rose potpourri assailed his senses. He wrinkled his nose and slipped in, letting the door click shut behind.

It left him in total darkness. Yuuta groped on the side of the wall where the light switches for the dorm rooms were located, and encountered something cold and metallic. _A mirror?_ He drew his hand back quickly and knocked against something that rattled woodenly, which caused something else to clink. There was a soft sound as of items of clothing falling on carpet. Yuuta winced. _Okay, Plan B. The curtains. The curtains have got to be over here somewhere..._

He took a step forward, then another, waving his hands around with blind caution and encountering nothing but air. His slippers sank into carpet pile so thick it felt like walking on something alive. The potpourri scent grew more cloying. Another step—

His shin bumped against something hard and immobile. Yuuta pitched forward and landed facefirst in smotheringly softness, before he could so much as move his arms to break his fall. It knocked the breath out of him momentarily. The record flew from his hand and hit something near the opposite wall with a clatter. Yuuta made a sound of dismay, inhaled attar of roses, and sneezed violently.

"Achoo! Aa—AATCHOO!"

Several sneezes later he curled up on his side, trying not to gulp for air and breathing carefully through his mouth instead. _Bed,_ his logical mind informed him. He'd fallen on Mizuki's bed. It was full of bolster-like shapes and vaguely sateeny-ruffly textures, and threatened to drown him in the sink and sway of the mattress. And it smelt of roses. He was going to smell of roses if – _when_ he got out. Yuuta lay quite still and wondered how it was physically possible to hate someone as much as he hated his brother, right now, as of this moment.

Light came back to the world. Yuuta blinked.

"Yuuta-kun? What are you doing in here?"

Bottomless pits of hatred were indeed possible.

Yuuta sat up slowly. Mizuki had one hand still hovering over the pull-chain of the Art Deco lamp with ornamental glass shade that stood near the door. With the other hand he nudged the door closed. He looked less offended than flustered.

"I couldn't find the light. I—" It wasn't so much the fact that he was as red as a beet, it was how he couldn't stop being _aware_ that he was as red as a beet— "I was trying to – Nomura said—"

"Nomura?" Mizuki looked around the room, spotted the bathrobe (wine-coloured velvet) on the carpet (Persian, in a burgundy paisley pattern), picked it up and hung it back neatly on the coatstand (stained antique wood). He kept glancing back at Yuuta and blinking, as if not quite able to square Yuuta's presence with the surroundings. That was fine by Yuuta: it proved he wasn't the only one.

"Nomura said you had a record player."

"Oh," said Mizuki. There was a pause the length of multiple incarnations and deaths by embarrassment. Then—

"I'lljustbegoing," Yuuta muttered, scrambling off the bed at the same time as Mizuki said, "What did you want to play?" After another bewildered pause Yuuta pointed in the general direction from which he'd heard the clattering noise.

"That," he said. "Um. It's okay really. I can go now, I, uh."

Mizuki ignored his protests, which was par for the course. He crossed the room in front of Yuuta and picked up the record from where it lay on the keyboard of his computer (ruby red), half in and half out of its sleeve.

"_Gloria Lynne's Greatest Hits..._ Well, well. I had no idea you listened to vocal jazz, Yuuta-kun. Or is this a new interest?" One hand came up and twined a lock of his hair thoughtfully.

Yuuta opened his mouth to disclaim responsibility, then thought very much the better of it. "Uhm. Yes. Something like that." He had a clear route of escape now that Mizuki had moved away from the door, but it would mean leaving the record behind.

Nothing good could possibly come of _that._

At the meaningful silence Mizuki turned and smiled. "You could ask me next time, you know," he said.

"Yes! I'm sorry, Mizuki-san, I—"

"Oh, Yuuta-kun, _really._ Just sit down."

* * *

The music wasn't what Yuuta had expected, insofar as he'd been expecting anything at all. For one, there were actual songs, containing identifiable tunes and choruses that didn't drag on through fifty variant iterations. Yuuta had long ago decided that the defining characteristic of Shuusuke's music – whether classical, jazz, an amalgamation of computer blurps or some arcane combination thereof – was its lack of hummability. Usually there wasn't even a vocalist. It made passable wallpaper for the ears, most times when he was in his room and Shuusuke was in his and the muffled sound of the record player drifted through the partition (how long had it been since _that_'d happened last?), but he never could see the point.

This was okay, though. Jazz still, no guitars or anything, but okay. Yuuta could barely understand a word out of twenty but at least it _had_ lyrics, and the beehive lady's voice was smoky and lulling. He propped his elbow on the computer table and his chin on his hand, stared at the spinning record (the player was nested within a lacquered cabinet, cunningly hidden behind decorative panelling) and tried to give it a chance.

Shuusuke never did anything without a reason. Yuuta was convinced of it. What mostly got his goat was the lack of straight answers.

The last song on the A-side ended; the needle lifted away with a sound of soft static. Yuuta got up to flip the record, glanced at the bed and realised with a start that Mizuki was asleep. He'd flopped over on his side, arms curled loosely around his middle and slippered feet still dangling off the edge. He appeared dangerously close to sliding off onto the floor.

Yuuta dithered a second, record in hand, but just as he made up his mind to break (quietly) for the door Mizuki stirred, and yawned.

"I apologise," he said. "I think I – ahhh – drifted off... Did I miss it?" He sat up, pushing his hair away from his face.

"It was okay," Yuuta said. "I'm really sorry, Mizuki-san, I'll go and let you sleep." He did feel sorry; Mizuki looked bleary. It occurred to Yuuta suddenly that he'd seemed tired for days, if not weeks. "You've been studying really late, haven't you?"

"Not at—" Another wide yawn interrupted Mizuki's protest. Yuuta yawned too, out of reflexive empathy. "...Well. Perhaps I am a little tired. But what must be done must be done, Yuuta-kun, if one is to accomplish one's goals."

"Yessir."

"It's a lesson you must take to heart and apply in practice, now that you are responsible for Saint Rudolph."

"Y... yessir." Yuuta looked down. "Mizuki-san?"

"Yes?"

"Will you be managing the tennis club at Francis-Xavier?"

Silence. Yuuta turned the record over and around in his hands. When he looked up Mizuki was watching him, the expression in his eyes inscrutable.

"I'd be a first-year, Yuuta-kun," he said. "Not that they _wouldn't_ need a firm hand guiding them. It's been my experience that all sport clubs benefit from unity of vision, and most are suffering from a lack in that area." He smiled, brushing a bit of hair back from his face. "You know, it's quite enough for a player just to handle their opponent during a match. To expect each one to plan his own off-court strategy and training protocol, without regard for the strengths and weaknesses of the team as a whole – at the very least it's a glaring inefficiency. Don't you agree?"

"I... guess." Mizuki always seemed reasonable. What was he trying to say? "Akazawa-buchou, he said—"

"Ah," Mizuki said. "Akazawa. I see. He's not your captain anymore, Yuuta-kun. You realise that, don't you?"

"Yes, but—"

"So it should hardly impair the smooth functioning of the team _now_ if I tell you that Akazawa's a fool and always was one." Mizuki reached up and ruffled Yuuta's hair kindly, then trailed a fingertip down the side of his face to his chin. The touch was cool and devilishly ticklish. "Akazawa's hit his ceiling insofar as development as a tennis player is concerned. You have more intelligence than that, Yuuta-kun, and more potential as a result. I should always be glad to have you on my side."

* * *

Two days later his brother called, just after morning club practice. Yuuta had been expecting it; exasperatingly enough, however, he wasn't sure _why_ he had been.

"What do you want?"

There was a brief pause, during which Yuuta thought Shuusuke might have been taken aback. But of course that was too bloody normal. "Come out with me."

"_What?_"

"Come out with me. It's my birthday this time." The smile at the other end of the line was perfectly audible. "I promise you'll be back before curfew."

Yuuta opened his mouth and closed it again. "I have homework to do," he said finally, and immediately wished he could grow another leg to kick himself. Clever excuses, that was him all over.

"Oh, I'm sure it can wait." His brother's voice was terrifyingly cheerful. "See you at twelve-thirty, then? I'll wait for you at the front gate."

He hung up. Yuuta stared at the uncommunicative screen of his phone, aghast.

_ I'll wait for you at the front gate? _

* * *

So of course he had no choice but to show up. Show up on _time_, before someone else could spot his brother and – horrors – ask him what he was hanging about for, whether he was waiting for anyone, if it were a girl and if so not to let the staff see him, didn't he know Catholic junior highs had no-dating rules, and hey wasn't he Fuji Shuusuke from Seishun Gakuen's tennis club? All in all it was beautifully ordered, and Yuuta thought savagely that he'd needed the reminder. A pain in the ass was like any other kind of pain: too long spent in blessed peace and you were liable to forget what the problem was.

"Sorry to make you wait," Shuusuke said. "I was just in the bakery across the street. Want a curry bun? I thought we could save them for later, but they're warm now."

Yuuta caught his breath and scowled. "Where are we going?" It was a different bus from the one he'd take to return to the Fuji family residence, and they'd had to run to catch it. Shuusuke had grabbed his hand to pull him along at first, for all as if they'd still been five or six years old, until Yuuta had shook him off. He hadn't even gotten a glimpse of the route number.

"On a picnic," Shuusuke said. Smiling. Yuuta saw that he was wearing proper tennis whites, like none of them ever did at school. In his free hand he carried a metal lunchbox. The bus trundled around a corner, and he swayed gracefully with the motion, nearly dangling from the passenger strap. One of those flashes again: normal, then not normal, Shuusuke a visitor in a world where not having him there had become the usual order. "I thought of it this morning. It's a beautiful day, isn't it?"

"Where?"

"It's a surprise." There it was: never a straight answer. Yuuta wasn't dressed for tennis, but then Shuusuke wasn't carrying a racket. He stared out the window of the bus, trying to ignore his brother. It _was_ a beautiful day; sunny, temperate for early spring. That much was true.

Several stops later they got off at the train station. Shuusuke paid, but Yuuta insisted on taking the ticket from him. The destination was a name he only knew nigglingly, without any sense of full recognition. He stuffed it in his pocket and didn't ask again.

They ate the buns standing on the platform, side by side. Shuusuke opened up the paper bag and tucked in without reservation, filling his immediate vicinity with the fragrance of spicy curried chicken. Then he glanced around, handed Yuuta the rest with a smile, and Yuuta forgot to realise he'd been staring. He was still working on his second one when their train pulled into the station.

They were actually not too bad, for food that had passed through his brother's hands.

The train ride took a long time. Shuusuke sat with his feet tucked in and the lunchbox perched neatly on his knees, talking lightly of nothing at all. Yuuta laughed, eventually, at an account of their mother's misadventure with the flight information system of a major American airline – "and she kept saying 'Narita, Na-ri-ta,' and it would tell her it was very sorry that destination did not exist" – and then they talked about France and Spain in the Davis Cup, and then words trailed away. Sunlight poured steadily through the windows, warming the plastic of the seats, making everything faded and bright. The train glided past houses, more houses, the occasional grove of trees delineating a park, bare branches beginning to mist red with bud. Fences and electric poles flickered past in the foreground like scratched lines on celluloid. Yuuta leant his forehead against the glass so he could look up at the sky. It was losing its winter paleness, taking on a more intense blue that spoke of spring. Summer. A hint of cerulean.

He woke disoriented. The sun was a few degrees lower, and Shuusuke was shaking his shoulder gently.

"Yuuta. We're here."

"Where's here?"

"Here here."

When Yuuta got out of the train, still blinking himself awake, he realised he could hear the sea.

* * *

A sensation of déja-vu hit him, all at once, when he followed Shuusuke around the corner of the last low-lying building. Yuuta stopped and stared. Wide concrete steps led down to the beach, bleached white with sun and seawater; the pale sand was dotted with dark specks of driftwood and overturned rowboats. A tongue of land embraced the bay, the buildings and trees barely touched with blue by the distance, giving way to horizon and sky. The air tasted raw and saline.

The sea resembled a broken expanse of mirrored glass. Shuusuke was descending the steps, and for a moment Yuuta had to squint, the white form of his brother wavering as it moved, brightness against bright.

"Aniki," he said, then caught himself and started down. Shuusuke was sitting on the last step when he caught up, occupied in undoing the laces of his canvas shoes.

"You should take your shoes off too, Yuuta," he said. "Otherwise you'll get sand in them." Yuuta frowned.

"Where are we?"

"The beach. It's a nice day for it, don't you think?"

"No, I mean—" Yuuta's voice trailed off. He stared at the long stretch of sand, the shimmering dark sea, and something clicked. "I know where this is. This is around where Saeki-san goes to school. Rokkaku."

"Pinpon," Shuusuke said cheerfully.

"You dragged me all the way to _Rokkaku?_"

"Bahia would have been rather short notice," Shuusuke said, and stood. He took a couple of steps, then stopped and turned. "Coming?"

Old habits died hard. Yuuta toed his footwear off and followed.

He thought at first that Shuusuke was going to head straight for the water, but halfway down the beach his brother turned to follow a path nearly parallel to the outgoing tide. Yuuta trailed behind, dangling his sneakers by their laces from one hand. The sea was still near the high-water mark, barely turned to ebb; Yuuta watched each long white-crested wave roll up the beach only to break a little earlier than the last, exhausting its strength and expiring in a swift wash of foam. As the sea withdrew it left behind a shining flat expanse of wet sand, off which the sun glared fiercely enough to make him squint. When he turned his head he saw their footprints as indistinct broken lines stretching into the distance, one trail meandering over the other, sometimes obliterating, sometime doubling. The roar of the waves was very loud.

It made him strangely light-headed. The sensation of déja-vu returned. Memory, or something seen in a film, or as if he were still dozing on the train and were dreaming this beach, this walk... how long had they been walking? He hastened his pace, to shake off the feeling, and broke into a trot. Dry sand, then wet sand, cool and firm against the soles of his feet.

"Oi, Aniki!"

Shuusuke stopped next to a particularly large chunk of driftwood, as if he'd been planning it all along. As Yuuta drew up alongside him he turned and smiled.

"Here," he said. "Here will do."

He set the metal lunchbox down on the driftwood and flipped the top open. Yuuta wondered fleetingly if his brother intended for them to picnic standing there with their feet nearly in the water, but instead of the expected bento compartments Shuusuke reached in and retrieved a small cactus in a terra-cotta pot. He made to hand it to Yuuta; when Yuuta didn't immediately respond he gestured again.

"Just hold it for a second. Be careful."

"What the _hell,_" Yuuta said, but took the pot and stared at it while Shuusuke fiddled with something he couldn't see. The cactus was a glossy, dark green flattened sphere segmented by projecting ribs, like the love-child of a tennis ball and a starfruit, and it was flowering. In fact the flower was larger than the cactus itself. It grew out of the side of the cactus ball on a fuzzy trumpet stem, a pink-tinged, double-petaled wheel like a miniature lotus. Its heart was fuzzy and golden with pollen.

"I'd hoped that it would flower earlier, on your birthday," said Shuusuke. "That would have been poetic. There's no way of timing them, of course, they do as they please. But for the sake of convenience I'm glad it chose a weekend."

He was smiling as he turned around; in his hand the blade of a knife flashed white. Yuuta took an involuntary step backward.

"Aniki—"

"Hold still," Shuusuke said, laughing. "This is a delicate operation, I don't want to make it more traumatic than necessary – there. Over quick."

He dusted the tip of Yuuta's nose with the flower. Yuuta unwisely inhaled, then sneezed violently, nearly dropping the pot.

"Oops," Shuusuke said, "better let me take that. Here." Yuuta found himself with the cut flower in one hand, and the closed pocket knife in the other. Its handle was neither metal nor wood, but a smooth ivory-like material, inlaid with fragments of mother-of-pearl. As far as he could tell, the blade was silver.

"Did you borrow this from Neesan?"

"It's like her, isn't it?" Shuusuke closed the lid of the lunchbox. "Yuuta. Do you remember the time we vacationed in Salvador? It was about ten years ago."

"I don't," Yuuta said. "I mean, I don't remember. But I know we were there." Shuusuke tilted his head consideringly. Behind him a wave crested, glittering, and fell.

"I'd like you to give this flower to the Lady for me, then. If you don't mind."

"To the Lady?"

"Because she kept her word."

When Yuuta stepped into the water he shivered, finding it chillier than he had expected. Goosebumps rose on his skin as the sea lapped his bare feet, then around his shins, tugging him in its swaying wake. The foam was ticklish. From the corner of his eye he saw Shuusuke follow in his wake, a step behind and to the right. Sand and bits of shell shifted between his toes. The petals of the cactus flower fluttered against his cupped fingers, like one of those strange animals of the sea that approximated unfeeling, terrestrial blossoms. He could hear Yumiko's voice, sing-song, almost-rhyming: _a sea day, a salt water day..._

He stopped when he could wade out no further without wetting his rolled-up pants legs. As the height of the next wave swirled around his knees he braced against it, bent and laid the flower on the surface of the water. For a second it floated there: exotic and delicate, multi-finned in pink and white - and in the next moment the sea rushed back out, washing it from sight. Yuuta waited to see if the next wave would carry it back to shore, but it seemed to have been swallowed whole.

It felt like a _thank you,_ but he didn't know for what. He suspected he would never remember.

"And now," said Shuusuke, "what will you do?" Yuuta turned his head, squinting against the light. Shuusuke was gazing at the offing, not at him. The tide-breeze blew strands of his hair back from his profile.

"Get back to where I left my shoes. The water's freezing."

"That's true. I wouldn't want Yuuta to catch cold."

"_I_ don't want me to catch cold. Yanagisawa-sempai would kill me. When someone gets sick in the dorm he tries to make everybody open doors with antiseptic wipes." Yuuta rubbed his nose to get rid of the psychosomatic itch. "You're not going to ask me to go back to Seigaku?"

Shuusuke turned to look at him. "I would've liked to," he said softly. "But I didn't think you would."

"Got that one right." Yuuta started back up the beach. "I'll see Echizen in the Nationals next year, you can tell him that."

"Yuuta—"

Yuuta turned. Much later he would remember the image: Shuusuke in white, standing ankle-deep in the tide-foam, his hands loose at his sides, light brown hair ruffled by the wind. The cerulean of the spring sky was mirrored twice, once in the sea and once in his brother's eyes.

Shuusuke's nature was water, their sister had said. But Yuuta had seen the fire. In those last matches of the last tournament Shuusuke had gasped for breath and run with sweat – had been drenched with it – had flown, had returned impossible serves, had played to perfection. To Yuuta it had seemed as if he'd burned with a white flame, too bright for the naked eye to bear.

He couldn't play at that level. But the two of them were not so dissimilar, in the end.

"Aniki," he said. "What did you promise?"

Shuusuke gazed up at him, his expression very still. Finally he said, "I promised I would take care of you. That I wouldn't forget again. And..."

"And?"

Shuusuke's lips curved.

"To let you go. When the time came."

* * *

They sat side by side on the concrete steps, putting on their shoes in silence. Yuuta tugged at his laces and tried to find the right words. Then he gave up and cut to the chase.

"I saw you play during the Nationals, you know," he said. "I saw you out there. You were serious about it. You were for real. For once – _once_ – you were for real."

It had been a straight answer. He didn't think he'd been the one to ask the question, but it was a matter of principle.

Shuusuke blinked. "Yuuta," he said, and finally sounded taken aback: caught between surprise and rueful laughter. Yuuta hadn't even been trying to faze him. "Not you too?"

"What do you mean, not me too?"

"My—" Shuusuke paused. "Did that... bother you?"

"No," said Yuuta. "What bothered me was that people who see you play tennis think you're the only Fuji in Japan. Including the mountain. And the apples. And the film." He tightened the knot firmly and stood up. "You're still the one I'm gunning for. Fair warning. I told Echizen that, too."

"Yuuta..."

"I won't know until I try, right?"

A long moment, and then Shuusuke smiled. "No. Nobody knows."

"Not until they try."

"Yes."

"Then that's it," Yuuta said. "Simple."

* * *

They were nearly back at the train station before Shuusuke asked, "So how did you like your birthday present?"

* * *

I wish you bluebirds in the spring  
To give your heart a song to sing  
And then a kiss, but more than this  
I wish you love  
And in July, a lemonade  
To cool you in some leafy glade  
I wish you health, and more than wealth  
I wish you love

My breaking heart and I agree  
That you and I could never be  
So with my best, my very best  
I set you free

I wish you shelter from the storm  
A cozy fire to keep you warm  
But most of all, when snowflakes fall  
I wish you love

— Gloria Lynne, "I Wish You Love"

* * *

_— Montreal, February 2004 - February 2005_


End file.
